What a busy start to the term we have had! It has been lovely welcoming all of the children into the setting and getting to know them all. Our main focus since the start of term has been personal, social and emotional skills. This has included encouraging positive relationships and a feeling of security with a lot of fun. Alongside this we have been setting good hygiene habits and supporting the children with their self care skills. There has been a lot of supervised handwashing and toileting in the last couple of weeks and we will continue to support the children with this.

In our setting we implement in the moment planning and this means that we base our teaching around the childrens interests. We have enjoyed getting to know the children and finding out who loves craft, who is keen to play outside and who like building with the construction toys.
We have have encouraged all of the children to investigate the environment and try out all of the resources, the activities we have participated in have included:

• listening to stories and looking at books, our story cd's are also very popular
• lots of physical play outside including making mud pies in the mud kitchen, pretending to be pirates on the sandpit. Making obstacle courses, rolling hoops and playing with balls. The children have also enjoyed group games such as 'what's the time Mr Wolf' and 'duck,duck,goose'.
• investigating our maths table, looking at numbers and counting objects
• finding shapes in the environment and looking at the properties of shapes (ie: can you find the shape with 3 sides?)
• lots of discussions on hygiene and reinforcing good handwashing practice
• being creative at the art table, sticking, cutting, drawing, chalking and painting. We also enjoyed making things for the new rainbow display board and talking about how plants grow
• talking about friendships, making friends and how we share as we are getting to know one another
• drawing self portraits for our learning journals
• playing with the small world toys such as the trains, cars and dolls house
• role playing making tea in our home corner area
• playing lotto and completing jigsaws
• naming and recognising colours, sorting and matching them
• learning the rules of the setting which include: being kind and sharing, listening to each other and no running inside

As usual the weekly blog represents a snapshot of what most of the children participate in during the week. Please speak to your child's key person if you would like to have further information about your child's interests and progress. You are welcome to ask your key person for feedback at any time and book a time to have a meeting for feedback on how your child is progressing.
We are looking forward to seeing you all next week. Hoping you all have a lovely weekend.
Best wishes, Julia, Grace, Sharon, Lisa, Hannah, Jackie and Amy